Vance Joseph left no room for ambiguity.

The marching orders for the Broncos defense this week after back-to-back last-second losses are abundantly clear.

Games need not come down to Justin Herbert making an all-world play to tie the game with 2 minutes, 37 seconds left. They shouldn’t be collectively holding their breaths as an opposing kicker approaches the ball for a walk-off field goal attempt.

Joseph’s defense needs to close better, he acknowledges. The Denver defense did it with a flourish Week 1 against Tennessee and has seen Indianapolis and the Los Angeles Chargers score late to win games in the weeks since.

But that, Joseph says, is not the primary problem.

“(Closing) has been a conversation, but it’s more about playing a cleaner and smarter brand of football for four quarters vs. waiting for the last series of the game to make our plays,” Joseph said Friday. “We’re playing hard, we’re playing good football overall.

“But we’re not playing clean enough and we’re not playing smart enough football.”

In 7.5 minutes at the podium on Friday talking with reporters, Joseph used “clean” or “cleaner” eight times.

That’s not about Herbert stepping away from a sack attempt or Riley Moss losing a contested battle to Keenan Allen in the end zone.

That’s Talanoa Hufanga committing a personal foul to jumpstart the touchdown drive. A third-and-10 miscommunication on the same play. John Franklin-Myers getting tagged for a relatively rare defensive holding. Nik Bonitto lining up offside on a fourth-and-4 punt that handed the Chargers a first down. Pat Surtain II had an illegal contact penalty. Moss and Hufanga both got called for pass interference. So on and so forth.

“The penalties on defense concern me, and they’re happening in the biggest moments of the game,” Joseph said. “… There’s two kinds of penalties. Pre-snap, which we don’t want ever, and aggressive penalties that we can accept from time to time. But when they hurt you, you can’t separate them.

“It’s costing us games right now. We can’t separate those. We have to, in those moments, play clean football. And if they call them, we have to correct them. We have to deal with it.“

The Broncos were plus-86 yards in penalty differential Week 1. The past two weeks, they were a combined minus-80. Defensively, they’ve been booked for 16 penalties and had five more declined.

Key defensive players have drawn special teams penalties, too, most notably Dondrea Tillman’s leverage foul on the deciding field goal against Indianapolis, but also Bonitto lining up offside on the punt. That play head coach Sean Payton equated to a turnover earlier this week.

Bonitto said he didn’t think he was lined up offside on the punt in the moment, but when he saw the replay, he realized he was.

“That’s just something I’ve got to be smarter about and look to the sideline, make sure I’m good with the ref,” he said.

The NFL’s early-season leader in pressures, Bonitto came oh so close to disrupting Herbert’s tying touchdown to Allen. That’s frustrating, obviously, but Bonitto echoed Joseph’s sentiment overall.

“At the end of the day, that’s just a great play,” the fourth-year pass-rusher said. “We did everything we needed to. We had him contained, and Riley was in great position. Stuff like that, we can’t get our heads too far down about.

“But the stuff that we can control as far as executing, we can be better at for sure.”

The Broncos have an interesting test Monday night at home. Cincinnati is not as formidable without Joe Burrow at quarterback, but it’s an offense that still features standout receivers in Ja’Marr Chase and Tee Higgins, plus a running back in Chase Brown and tight end in Mike Gesicki whom Joseph on Thursday referred to as “special.”

“I feel like it’s definitely — as far as execution, penalties, all that stuff — it’s just got to be cleaner across the board if we want to be not only the defense we want to be but the team we want to be,” Bonitto said.

Joseph acknowledged he needs to “coach better” in the fourth quarter of close games and that somehow, some way, many weeks in the NFL are going to come down to the closing minutes. At the same time, though, he is spending the week hammering the same line of thought into his group.

“We are definitely close to being what we want to be,” he said. “It’s early. In the first month of the season, you’re always trying to figure out what you’re good at, what your new pieces do well. … We’ve played two really good football teams. Measuring sticks for us. I feel good about where we are.

“My focus all week has been to coach and teach a smarter and cleaner brand of football. That’s our focus right now. If we can do that, we’ll be fine.”

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Originally Published: September 26, 2025 at 4:46 PM MDT